Speakers 2024

Most inspiring breakthroughs and honest, radical discussions

Energy transition & Clean mobility
Decarbonized manufacturing & buildings
Sustainable food systems
Healthcare for All
Climate resilience and biodiversity
Advanced computing: New Frontiers
Investor Insights
Scaling for global impact
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
All
Craig Douglas
In

Craig Douglas

Founding Partner

World Fund

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Craig Douglas has been investing in climate tech companies over the past 10 years at one of Europe’s longest-running climate funds, SET Ventures, where he specialized in energy, the built environment and transportation. Craig has pioneered ESG and Impact in the venture community after creating a leading ESG framework in 2012, as well as co-designing a model which links impact to fund performance and compensation in 2018, which is now used by over 30 funds. Craig is also an advisor to the EU Commission on Energy.

Julia Reinaud
In

Julia Reinaud

Senior Director, Europe

Breakthrough Energy Ventures

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Julia has been working in the field of climate and energy for the past two decades, focused on decarbonizing the energy and industry sectors. Julia joined Breakthrough Energy in 2018. She has been shaping and implementing the organization’s activities and partnerships in Europe. As part of that effort, Julia worked with the European Commission and the European Investment Bank to set up Breakthrough Energy Ventures Europe, a €100 million fund dedicated to investing in Europe’s best clean energy entrepreneurs, as well as the $1bn EU-Catalyst partnership that is investing in key emerging climate technology projects.

Michael Finelli
In

Michael Finelli

Chief Technology Innovation Officer

Syensqo

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Michael Finelli, Syensqo's CTIO & Chief North America Officer, with 30+ years in the chemical industry, leads Syensqo’s growth platforms in Batteries, Green Hydrogen, Thermoplastic Composites, and Renewable Materials & Biotechnology. Based in Alpharetta, Georgia, Mike contributes to customer engagement, operational leadership, and sustainability, with board memberships at the American Chemistry Council and FOSSI Advisory Board.

Benjamin Tincq
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Benjamin Tincq

Co-Founder

Marble

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Benjamin Tincq is Founding Partner at Marble. He partners with scientists, engineers and operators to solve hard climate problems, and create companies that slash emissions, remove carbon, and cool the planet. He co-founded and serve on the board of Carbon Gap, a climate NGO which aims to make Europe a leader in carbon dioxide removal. Ben also advises climate foundations on how to fix climate solutions ecosystems. Before, he did various things in tech, such as helping to start a fusion power company. He started as an engineer in a different field and had a non-linear journey that led him to climate, startups, and deeptech. He loves biology, chemistry, physics, AI, and working with bright, mission driven scientists.

Lilian Schwich
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Lilian Schwich

Co-founder and CEO

Cylib

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Dr. Ing. Lilian Schwich is co-founder and CEO of the start-up cylib, which offers a holistic lithium-ion battery recycling solution. cylib’s deep tech technology and proprietary end-to- end recycling process offers an efficient, resource- and climate friendly recovery of all relevant battery raw materials such as lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt or manganese, from entire battery packs or production scraps. Dr. Ing. Lilian Schwich led the battery recycling team at the Institute for Metallurgical Process Technology and Metal Recycling at RWTH Aachen University, where she developed the proprietary process in collaboration with cylib’s co-founder and CTO, Paul Sabarny. Alongside the third co-founder and COO, Dr. Ing. Gideon Schwich, cylib has constructed an end-to-end battery recycling facility in under 10 months with a capacity of one battery pack per day since September 2023 and built up a team of 44 professionals. Dr. Ing. Lilian Schwich recently won the renown North Rhine Westphalia Innovation Prize 2023 for her technological advancements, which cylib is now scaling to serve the global battery recycling market.

Eric Dusseux
In

Eric Dusseux

Venture Partner

Breakthrough Energy Ventures

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Pathfinder in Europe, the US and Canada, Eric is supporting, as Venture Partner, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment firm seeking to finance, launch, and scale companies (more than 100 to date) that will eliminate greenhouse gas emissions throughout the global economy. His talks are inspired by his former experience as a start-up entrepreneur, an executive Committee member of the vaccine BU of a F500 company, a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. Eric is a Medical Doctor -specialized in public health & epidemiology-, a Physical Chemist -specialized in air pollution & physics of the environment-, and a MBA.

Lina Bertling Tjernberg
In

Lina Bertling Tjernberg

Professor

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

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Lina directs the Energy Platform at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, which coordinates new research initiatives within energy areas. She is an expert adviser in government and industry for sustainable energy solutions and her research aims to modernise the electric power system, also referred to as the Smart Grid.

Julia Davourie
In

Julia Davourie

Co-founder & General Partner

Convergent Ventures

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Julia Davourie is a General Partner of Convergent Ventures, based in San Francisco. She co-leads the fund’s strategy in sustainability. She invests in and mentors teams commercializing breakthrough technologies to meet human needs while protecting the planet.

Peter Börkey
In

Peter Börkey

Circular Economy Lead

OECD Environment Directorate

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Peter Börkey has been working on international and local environmental policy issues for 25 years. He is currently leading work on waste management, resource productivity and the circular economy at the OECD Environment Directorate. Prior to this, Mr Börkey has been leading OECD’s cooperation with countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus in the area of water management, as well as work focusing on the financing of water supply and sanitation in developing countries more generally. Before joining the OECD, Mr Börkey worked as a consultant, specialized in environmental economics. Mr Börkey holds degrees in Economics and Engineering from the Technical University of Berlin and University of Grenoble in France.

Miranda Wang
In

Miranda Wang

Co-founder & CEO

Novoloop

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Miranda Wang is a venture-backed climate tech entrepreneur. She is the Co-founder and CEO of Novoloop, an emerging leader in plastic circularity, transforming post-consumer plastic waste into the world’s first chemically Lifecycled™ performance materials. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, the venture-backed start-up has raised $26M to date and is building and scaling new technologies to reinvent the chemical value chain.

Hussein Dhanani
In

Hussein Dhanani

Global Head of Strategic Partnerships / Deputy CCO

Climeworks

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Hussein spearheads Strategic Partnerships at Climeworks, a pioneer in direct air capture technology. His focus lies in forging impactful partnerships that empower companies to advance their net-zero roadmaps and fight global warming. With over 15 years of senior leadership roles, notably at P&G, Hussein is a seasoned expert driving impactful change in the realm of climate innovation. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from EPFL and is an alumnus of Columbia University.

Bénédicte Garbil
In

Bénédicte Garbil

Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability and member of the Executive Committee

Carbios

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Bénédicte Garbil started as a public affairs advisor at the French Federation of Healthcare Industries before becoming Director of Public Affairs at a pharmaceutical laboratory. In 2013, she joined the public sector, first working at the General Directorate of Enterprises (DGE) as Head of the Health, Biotechnology, and Agri-food Industries Bureau, and then at the General Investment Commissioner’s Office (CGI) from 2014 to 2017 as Deputy Director of Health and Biotechnology. After her public service, she led Edwards Lifesciences in France for 4 years, then founded a consulting company accompanying biotechnology and healthcare companies in their development, from valuation to market access, including industrial development in France.

Alex Scott
In

Alex Scott

Senior Editor

C&EN magazine

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Alex Scott is the Senior Editor and European correspondent for US science magazine C&EN writing and filming on topics that include microplastics, tyre recycling, textile recycling technology, PFAS pollution, battery materials, flow batteries, and the chemical industry’s low carbon transition. Prior to becoming a journalist over 20 years ago he was an environment advisor for the UN.

Marilene Pavan
In

Marilene Pavan

Innovation Manager

Lanzatech

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Marilene Pavan works as Innovation Manager at LanzaTech Inc., a gas fermentation company focused on converting waste carbon oxides into biofuels and chemicals. Her expertise spans over 15 years in synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and biomanufacturing and, in her current role, she focuses on technology monitoring, competitive analysis, community and team building, partnerships, and mentoring younger scientists.

Adam M. Adamek
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Adam M. Adamek

Innovation Director

EIT Food

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Dr Adam M. Adamek, Innovation Director at EIT Food, combines over 20-year journey in science, business, and innovation in food, nutrition, and agrifoodtech. His professional roles balanced business growth with societal impact. An advocate for agrifoodtech innovation, creating impactful strategies to drive sustainable change in the food systems. Eager to connect with fellow innovators passionate about making a tangible difference and impact.

Amr Aswad
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Amr Aswad

CEO

Zayt Bioscience

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Amr completed a PhD in evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford, where he was first inspired to leverage the untapped potential of nature. Using microbes to address the world’s most pressing challenges was the inspiration that lead to the founding of Zayt Bioscience. In just a few short months of R&D, Zayt has developed a revolutionary, patent-pending process to transform food waste into valuable raw materials such as their healthy, highly functional ‘Zayt butter’.

Christine Gould
In

Christine Gould

Founder & CEO

Thought For Food

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Christine is a global leader in agri-food-tech innovation, an energizing community-builder & an activator of breakthrough ideas that create lasting change in food and agriculture. As the Founder & CEO of Thought For Food, she galvanized a community of 30,000+ entrepreneurs in 180+ countries who are dedicated to transforming food systems. The programs she has developed have generated 8000+ business ideas and launched 70+ startups.

Matthieu Vermersch
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Matthieu Vermersch

Co-Founder & Partner

Clay Capital

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Matthieu Vermersch brings over 25 years of investment experience in multiple geographies and asset classes. He has pioneered investing in the agrifood tech market, co-founding Clay Capital (fka. Vis Vires New Protein) in 2014 in Singapore. The team have been active ecosystem builders, both in Asia and Europe, and invested in a concentrated portfolio of companies that span the food and agriculture value chain internationally. Clay Capital focuses exclusively on finding disruptive solutions to global food and feed system dysfunctions, employing a disciplined investment approach built on identifying existing global problems within the value-chain and providing real world solution. Matthieu is graduated from Sciences Po Paris and University of Paris Dauphine, and after 15 years in Asia, now calls London home.

Matthew Furber
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Matthew Furber

Director. R&I Plant Based

Danone

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Matthew Furber focused the first 10 years of his career in elite sport, supporting numerous World Class athletes to achieve success. For the past 6 years he has worked at Danone Nutricia Research, firstly leading a center of excellence in developing new muscle targeted nutrition solutions for aging and disease specific populations. He’s also the Director of plant based network, driving advances in plant based science and product application for Specialized Nutrition populations and has built and is leading the sustainability program for R&I, driving the complexity of decarbonisation through ingredients.

Katia Merten-Lentz
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Katia Merten-Lentz

Founder & Partner

Food Law Science & Partners

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Katia Merten-Lentz, partner resident and founder/manager of the law firm Food Law Science & Partners, has been for more than 25 years, a leading practitioner in European food and feed law. Her practice also extends to Biotechnologies, Environmental Law and Cosmetics Law. She is one of the few lawyers assisting clients from A to Z in the food and feed area obtaining European authorization for new additives, enzymes, novel foods and accompanying them with issues ranging from marketing to innovation.

Céline Triquel
In

Céline Triquel

Head of R&D Open Innovation

Spartners by Servier and BioLabs

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Pharmacist by training, she has started her career in the field of clinical development in pharmaceutical industry dealing with patients’ medical data. She developed there her skills focused on innovation in all its forms that led her to an intrapreneurship project. She then naturally oriented her career in this direction leading a lab of innovation in Research and now heading Spartners by Servier and BioLabs, the incubator for biotech, Servier has open with BioLabs at Saclay.

Elodie Chabrol
In

Elodie Chabrol

Freelancer & Director

Pint of Science festival (France & globally)

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Elodie is a freelance science communication consultant and the director of the Pint of Science festival. Her academic background as a PhD holder and a former research associate gives her a strong first-hand understanding of how researchers can communicate science better. Her specialities are training scientists to communicate with the public, organising and moderating science events and podcasts.

Nataliya Kosmyna
In

Nataliya Kosmyna

Research scientist

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Media Lab

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Dr. Kosmyna is a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Media Lab. She is passionate about an idea of creating a partnership between AI and human intelligence, fusion of a machine and a human brain. Most of her projects are focused around wearable BCIs to enhance, augment and support human performance, particularly attention and focus on healthcare and spacetech. Nataliya won multiple awards for her work, among which is L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science award she received in 2016. Nataliya was also named as one of 10 Top French Talent 2017 from MIT Innovators Under 35

Pae Wu
In

Pae Wu

General Partner & CTO

SOSV / IndieBio

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Pae is a General Partner at SOSV and CTO at IndieBio, where she is responsible for portfolio management and technical oversight. Pae has invested in high risk solutions to intractable problems in both government and corporate contexts. She applies rigorous science and engineering to transform emerging technologies into solutions for national defense, humanity, and the planet. She is especially passionate about bridging engineered materials and systems to biology. Prior to joining IndieBio, Pae served as the Scientific Director of Telefónica’s moonshot factory – Alpha (Barcelona), Science Director at the US Office of Naval Research – Global (Singapore), and technical consultant at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She holds degrees in Electrical Engineering from Duke (PhD) and Princeton (BS)."

Sarah Neville
In

Sarah Neville

Global Health Editor

Financial Times

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Sarah Neville is the FT's global health editor. She covers the NHS, and healthcare developments around the world. In more than 22 years at the FT, she has held a variety of editing and reporting roles including weekend news editor, analysis editor, UK news editor, public policy editor and global pharmaceuticals editor. Immediately before joining the FT she spent a decade reporting on Westminster, latterly as political editor of the Yorkshire Post. In 1995 she was awarded the Laurence Stern Fellowship on the Washington Post.

Alison Holland
In

Alison Holland

Executive General Manager, Digital & Decentralized Solutions

Medable

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Alison Holland works closely with customers to align DCT platform tech and methodologies to maximize ROI and outcomes of clinical research. With 20+ years of experience in leadership roles, including as Six Sigma Black Belt at Covance and LabCorp's Business Head, she has been engaged in over 300 studies worldwide.

Austin Che
In

Austin Che

Co-Founder

Ginkgo Bioworks

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Ginkgo is the leading horizontal platform for cell programming and its biosecurity unit, Concentric by Ginkgo, is building global infrastructure to prevent, detect and respond to a wide variety of biological threats. Prior to co-founding Ginkgo, Austin received his Ph.D. from MIT and undergraduate degree from Stanford.

Maxine Mackintosh
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Maxine Mackintosh

Programme Lead - Diverse Data

Genomics England

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Maxine leads an initiative that reduces health inequalities in genomic medicine by ensuring patients receive the same quality of personalised medicine, supported by the latest research on people like them. She also co-founded One HealthTech, a global, grassroots community supporting under-represented groups in health innovation.

Fayza Daboussi
In

Fayza Daboussi

TWB Scientific Director

Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB)

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Fayza Daboussi is the TWB Scientific Director since 2019. With 20+ years of experience in genetic engineering R&D to develop solutions in various fields from health to commodity chemicals, her expertise extends to human cells, as well as microorganisms (bacteria, yeasts, microalgae...). Fayza also supports the French initiative on reducing biotherapeutics costs through her position as the Executive Director of the Toulouse Industrial Biotechnology for Health (TIBH) integrator.

Sarah Jones
In

Sarah Jones

Principal

Zero Carbon Capital

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Sarah is a Principal at Zero Carbon Capital, investing in pre-seed/seed hard-science startups solving the biggest challenges of decarbonisation. ZCC is based in London and Berlin, investing across Europe. Sarah has a PhD in bioprocess engineering, previously worked in university tech transfer at Imperial and Oxford and led the climate program at the Creative Destruction Lab in the UK.

Jen Stebbing
In

Jen Stebbing

Climate & nature communications consultant

Climate & Nature Communications

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Jen Stebbing is a strategic communications consultant who draws on a deep and varied experience helping organisations and leaders multiply their positive impact, engage stakeholders, and communicate clearly. Jen specialises in climate change and nature communications with experience across carbon markets, climate solutions, nature tech, natural capital investment, climate action organisations and nature advocacy groups.

Lynn Rothschild
In

Lynn Rothschild

Senior Research Scientist

NASA Ames Research Center

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Lynn Rothschild, a research scientist at NASA and Professor at Brown University, is a passionate astrobiologist focusing on the origin and evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere, while at the same time pioneering the use of synthetic biology to enable space exploration. She has been a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fellow five times and was the faculty advisor of the Stanford-Brown iGEM team. Current projects range from biomining, developing an astropharmacy and mycotecture for Mars, among others.

Axelle Ducos
In

Axelle Ducos

Chief Growth Officer

Land Life

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Axelle Ducos is the Chief Growth Officer of Land Life. In her capacity, she works with committed corporations, landowners, and investment partners to finance and develop large-scale, tech-enabled reforestation projects that mitigate climate change and revitalize ecosystems and biodiversity. She graduated from HEC Paris, and received an M. Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics

Nicolas Pade
In

Nicolas Pade

Executive director for the European research infrastructure

European Marine Biological Resource Centre (EMBRC)

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Nicolas Pade holds a PhD in molecular and spatial ecology from the University of Aberdeen with a focus on marine predators. Nicolas became the executive officer for the french national research infrastructure EMBRC-France, before taking over as the executive director of EMBRC-ERIC to coordinate the European research infrastructure in 2019. Nicolas has a particular interest in the broad application of genomics tools in marine observation and understanding marine biodiversity.

Ralph de Wargny
In

Ralph de Wargny

Director

Intel Liftoff

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Ralph de Wargny leads the global Intel® Liftoff for AI Startups accelerator, a free program to help early-stage AI startups with technical expertise, access to cloud compute resources including CPUs, GPUs and Gaudi2 accelerators, plus go-to-market support. Before that, Ralph was leading the Intel Software business in the EMEA region, focusing on HPC and AI with startups and enterprises.

Ben Zevenbergen
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Ben Zevenbergen

Ethics advisor

Google

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Ben works at Google as an ethics advisor. He has worked as a tech law attorney, a policy advisor in the European Parliament on internet policy, did a PhD at Oxford and a postdoc at Princeton. His work has always focused on the intersection of society and technology design. Ben draws from various academic disciplines and professional practices to constructively work through and improve technology.

Niall	Firth
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Niall Firth

Executive editor, newsroom

MIT Technology Review

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Niall Firth is executive editor, newsroom at MIT Technology Review, where he manages the reporting team and oversees the brand’s digital journalism and newsletters. His role is to help guide coverage across all its key focus areas, including AI, energy and biotechnology. Before joining MIT Rechnology Review, he was chief news editor at New Scientist. He is based in London.

Jean-François Bobier
In

Jean-François Bobier

Partner & Director

BCG

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Jean-François Bobier is a Partner and Vice President at the Boston Consulting Group expertise center on deep tech, where he leads research and has authored key publications. He advises Fortune 500 companies on adopting deep technologies, notably quantum computing, synthetic biology, at scale for both competitive advantage and climate & sustainability.

Daphné Leprince-Ringuet
In

Daphné Leprince-Ringuet

French Tech Reporter

Sifted

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Daphné Leprince-Ringuet is a reporter for Sifted based in Paris and covering French tech

Maya Noël
In

Maya Noël

CEO

France Digitale

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Maya Noël is the Managing Director of France Digitale, the leading European startup and investor association with nearly 2000 members. The organization's mission is to create European digital champions and to animate and federate the startup and innovation ecosystem in France and Europe. Maya Noël started her career in digital in 2012 and immediately focused her energy on finding the best talent for fast-growing startups. In 2015, she founded her startup YBorder, specialized in international recruitment.

Christophe Jurczak
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Christophe Jurczak

Partner

Quantonation

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Christophe Jurczak, PhD, is managing partner at Quantonation, with his various degrees in Quantum Physics he has worked in energy, defense and in the emerging quantum industry. Additionally he is a board member at several startups and nonprofits.

Carmen Palacios-Berraquero
In

Carmen Palacios-Berraquero

Founder and CEO

Nu Quantum

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Carmen Palacios-Berraquero is the founder and Chief Executive of Nu Quantum , a leading Quantum Computer Networking company based in Cambridge, UK. She is an award-winning quantum physicist and inventor, author of several high-impact research papers and a book based on her doctoral research. She has been the leader of several pro-equality and LGBTQIA+ visibility groups, initiatives and direct action in STEM and beyond and has been featured in WIRED, Forbes, BBC, and Sifted. She serves on the Technical Advisory Board of the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) Centre and is co-founder and director of UKQuantum, the UK’s quantum industry group.

Paula Naidhig Puzzi
In

Paula Naidhig Puzzi

Corporate Venture Capital Senior Manager

Suzano Ventures

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Senior Manager of corporate VC activities at Suzano Ventures. Responsible for global networking and establishing new venture partnerships to advance the bioeconomy. She leads Eucalyptus Biomass and Packaging investment verticals, overseeing the startup journey from inception to portfolio management, to generate shared value for both the startup and Suzano. She has 19 years of experience in marketing, product launches and R&D across B2B and B2C sectors, managing several innovation, marketing and sustainability projects. Paula holds a BSc in Industrial Chemistry from the University of São Paulo (USP) and two MBAs; one in Marketing (ESPM and one in Innovation Projects (USP).

Chris Smart
In

Chris Smart

Senior Investment Manager

British Patient Capital

Maya Ghayad
In

Maya Ghayad

Partner

Id4 Ventures

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Maya Ghayad is a Partner at Id4 Ventures, a Fund of Funds and Direct Investment firm in Europe, specializing in early-stage allocations for Family Offices & Private Investors. Maya’s role involves managing direct investments, finding new early stage opportunities, and driving the fund of funds strategy. Additionally, she provides strategic guidance to empower portfolio companies to secure their funding rounds. Maya is recognized through her angel investments and active involvement in the startup ecosystem

Benjamin Joffe
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Benjamin Joffe

Partner

SOSV

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Partner at SOSV, Benjamin works with our startups on strategy, marketing, PR and fundraising. Moving from France to Asia in 2000, Benjamin is a reformed mechanical engineer who turned to strategy and worked in Japan, South Korea and China. Prior to SOSV, Benjamin was the founder of a strategy consultancy which researched Asia-based digital innovations, with clients such as Microsoft, Citi and Harvard Business School. He also founded Mobile Monday Beijing, a community of thousands of mobile industry professionals in China.

Kaustubh Wagle
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Kaustubh Wagle

Managing Director

BCG

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Kaustubh is a Managing Director & Partner at Boston Consulting Group in the Middle East. He leads BCG's Tech Capital sector in the Middle East and is a core member of the Technology and Private Equity practice areas. In these roles, he advises Private Equity, Venture Capital and TMT clients on tech investments, including AI, Cybersecurity, e-Commerce, FinTech and other digital plays. Kaustubh is a seasoned strategist and investor with a focus on technology and innovation. With extensive experience in advising on venture capital funds, corporate investments, and strategic partnerships, Kaustubh has played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of tech investments in the Middle East and beyond. Prior to joining BCG, Kaustubh was Head of Strategy in the internal consulting team at British Telecom (BT) in London. Kaustubh holds an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business and London Business School and Degrees in Economics and Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.

Andras Forgacs
In

Andras Forgacs

Senior Partner

Starlight Ventures

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Andras is an entrepreneur and investor in deep tech and life sciences. He is Senior Partner at Starlight Ventures, a venture capital firm for founders addressing the world’s most pressing challenges and opportunities. Starlight partners early with unstoppable entrepreneurs leveraging breakthrough science and technology to pursue progress at scale. Andras is founder, director & former CEO of Modern Meadow, a protein application platform company developing novel materials and ingredients for a healthier planet. Named as a 2018 Tech Pioneer by the World Economic Forum (WEF), Modern Meadow’s Bio-Alloy biomaterials and collagen-inspired fermentation-derived proteins address high performance and sustainable applications in fashion, beauty and wellness markets. Andras is also co-founder and chair of Fork & Good, a 2023 WEF Tech Pioneer, innovating in cellular agriculture to produce delicious, nutritious and sustainable meat without animals. Previously, Andras co-founded Organovo which pioneered the use of 3D bio-printing to create human tissue for a range of biomedical applications. He managed Richmond Global, an international technology-focused venture fund and was a consultant with McKinsey. He is co-founder and former chair of the Resolution Project focused on global social entrepreneurship, a Kauffman Fellow (Class 14) and was recognized as 40 under 40 by Crain’s New York. Andras graduated with a bachelors from Harvard and an MBA from Wharton. And his greatest venture are his two daughters Alexa and Amelia.

Pippy James
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Pippy James

Chief Product Officer

ARIA

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Pippy is the Director of Product at the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA). She oversees the design and development of ARIA's operating and funding model – including the programme development process – and their entrepreneurial science initiatives. Previously, she co-founded Gleen, a women’s health start-up, and was Global Product Manager at Entrepreneur First.

Guilhem de Vregille
In

Guilhem de Vregille

Partner

XAnge

Nick de la Forge
In

Nick de la Forge

Co-founder & General Partner

Planet A Ventures

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Nick is a trained industrial engineer and entrepreneur who spent his career in deep-tech, particularly in the WEB3.0, focussing on the intersection of blockchain, artificial intelligence, IOT and commercialisation. Throughout different roles at leading firms in european deep-tech startups and funds, his own company Scalewonder as well as long-ranging track record as an angel investor, Nick accumulated the knowledge and skills to build Planet A . Nicks path towards Planet A started when he co-founded Scalewonder. During this time it became obvious to him that focussing on the planet is mission critical for human society while the global VC-world was simply not equipped to fund the most important innovation needed to build an economy operation within the planetary boundaries and decided to move forward accordingly. At Planet A, Nick is leading the fundraising endeavours as well as the responsible deal partner for Energy & Heat as well as Transport & Mobility. He is also the deep-tech technology expert on board.

Andrew J Scott
In

Andrew J Scott

General Partner

7 Percent Ventures

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Andrew J Scott is a serial entrepreneur turned Founding Partner at 7percent Ventures, where his team have backed over 150 early stage startups. He is co-founder of The ICE Network non-profit founder community, established in 2008 and the DragonChasers GP/LP community, which runs the ALLOCATE.GP European VC pitch event series.

Lucy Wang
In

Lucy Wang

Co-Founder & General Partner

Divergent Capital

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Lucy Wang is an experienced early stage emerging technology investor and operator. She is a founding general partner at Divergent Capital, a first check investor backing startups commercializing deeply technical & scientific innovations and breaking the mold of traditional business models. Prior to founding her own firm, she led deep tech investing at funds such as 11.2 capital and Greycroft. Lucy has invested in companies such as Immuta, Covariant AI, Machina Labs, Remedy Robotics, Shellworks, and more. As an operator, Lucy most recently served as the COO and Head of Product at Rendered AI, a synthetic data platform, where she led product and customer engagements. Lucy was also a founding team member of Livepeer, a decentralized live video streaming infrastructure built on Ethereum, leading operations and strategy. Lucy is trained as a machine learning scientist with an MS degree from NYU and BA degree from Brown University.

Yoram Wijngaarde
In

Yoram Wijngaarde

Founder & CEO

Dealroom.co

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Founder of Dealroom, which was launched in 2014 in Amsterdam to provide insights and intelligence about the world's most promising companies. Top tier venture capital firms like Sequoia, Insight Partners, Balderton, Atomico, and world class corporates like Google, Amazon, Stripe, McKinsey, BCG, EY, Deloitte, Unilever, Pepsi and others use Dealroom software and data to stay at the forefront of innovation and discover the world’s most promising companies. Before founding Dealroom, Yoram was an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, Nomura Securities and NOAH Advisors in New York and London. Yoram has a cum laude Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Amsterdam.

Maria Jose Alvarez
In

Maria Jose Alvarez

Managing Partner

WNT Ventures

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Maria Jose is a Managing Partner at WNT Ventures, NZ’s longest-standing deep tech incubator and VC fund. MJ has over a decade of experience in venture building, investments, and funds management in Chile and New Zealand. Focused on Pre-Seed to Series A investments and raising its fourth fund, WNT has a track record of managing successful exits and catalyzing dep-tech innovations coming from New Zealand.

Steve Jacobs
In

Steve Jacobs

Partner & CPO

Lakestar

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Steve brings over a decade of experience in product management, design, and development from Silicon Valley for companies such as Apple, HP, Facebook, and Google as well as having founded and exited his own start-up. Steve leads the Deep Tech investing team where they search for companies that will be global leaders built on fundamentally novel scientific or engineering breakthroughs. As Chief Product Officer he additionally supports the broader investment team on product related topics as well as offers value-add support to portfolio founders and CPOs.

Lise Rechsteiner
In

Lise Rechsteiner

General Partner

Vsquared Ventures

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Lise is a General Partner at Vsquared Ventures, an early-stage deep-tech fund investing in novel computing, green energy, robotics, ML, new space, & tech-bio. Vsquared has a strong pan-European deep tech portfolio with over 35 investments to date, including Isar Aerospace, IQM & Zama. Lise has been in VC since 2015 and previously co-founded a Nordic deep tech fund, built companies under Rocket Internet and holds a PhD in technology management from ETH Zurich.

Tyler Christie
In

Tyler Christie

Managing Director

Decarbonization Partners

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Tyler Christie is MD for Decarbonization Partners, a BlackRock and Temasek JV based with 20+ years experience in sustainability as a venture investor, entrepreneur, and growth executive. He started his career as a data scientist, received an MBA from The Wharton School, and now lives in London

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Mark Reilly

Managing Partner

IP Group

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Mark is an impact-focused technology investor and business builder. He has overseen more than 200 private and public company venture transactions and has well over a decade of experience sitting on the boards of some of the UK’s most exciting Deeptech start-ups. He was a board member at Wave Optics when it was sold to Snap Inc for over $500m and led the first investments into companies like First Light Fusion, Ultraleap and Quantum Motion Technologies. Mark holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK.

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Kulika Weizman

General Partner

Creative Ventures

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Kulika Weizman is a General Partner at Creative Ventures investing in early-stage deep tech companies solving humanity’s most critical crises: rising healthcare costs, climate change, and labor shortages. She leverages her scientific expertise and operational experience in her role at Creative. Kulika holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology (UC Berkeley) and B.S. in Economics (the Wharton School).

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Hany Nada

Co-Founder and Partner

ACME Capital

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Hany is a Co-Founder and Partner at ACME Capital. Prior to founding ACME in 2018, he was a Co-Founder and Partner at GGV Capital. Hany has served as a long-term partner to more than 150 companies over the past two decades, advising them on global markets, business development, go-to-market strategy, and M&A/IPO guidance across US, European, and Asian markets. Hany currently serves on the board of directors of AviaGames, Forma.ai, Forte, Petra, Regology, and Uhnder.

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Fatou Diagne

Co-founder and managing partner

Bootstrap Europe

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Fatou is the co-founder and managing partner for Bootstrap Europe, actively sourcing and evaluating growth companies eligible for debt financing.

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Cyril Ebersweiler

General Partner

SOSV/HAX

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Cyril is a General Partner at SOSV and the Founder/MD of HAX, the leading hands-on venture capital for hard tech. With over two decades of experience in US and Asian markets, Cyril has invested in hundreds of deep tech companies (including Formlabs, AngelList, Opentrons and AdoreMe), generated $B in value and completed 26 M&As.

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Seth Bannon

Founding Partner

Fifty Years

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Seth Bannon is a Founding Partner at Fifty Years. Seth has seeded a range of deep tech startups shaping the world for the better — companies like Solugen (engineering enzymes to make carbon negative chemicals), Astranis (small satellites to cover the Earth in Internet), and Upside Foods (culturing meat to eat). Passionate about helping more PhDs start startups, he and Fifty Years published the Spinout Playbook, a guide to spinning out of academia, and run 5050, the leading program to help PhDs start startups. Seth is also the co-founder of Impact.Tech, a community of entrepreneurs combining purpose with profit, and was previously the founder & CEO of startup Amicus. A graduate of Y Combinator, Seth was named twice to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Social Entrepreneurship. An avid chess player, Seth can occasionally be found in parks around the world attempting to hustle chess hustlers.

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Laurie Menoud

Founding Partner

At One Ventures

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Laurie Menoud is a founding Partner at At One Ventures, she holds board member positions at 8 portfolio companies and has over a decade of deep tech commercialization, company building, and venture capital experience. She will also be speaking at our VIP Financing the Future event!

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Yair Reem

Partner

Extantia Capital

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Yair Reem is a Partner at Extantia Capital, a climate-first venture capital firm accelerating the path to a decarbonised world. Previously, Yair was Managing Director at Hasso Plattner Ventures and a cyber technology leader at Israeli Military Intelligence - Unit 8200.

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Andreas Riegler

General Partner

APEX Ventures

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Founder and General Partner of APEX Ventures, a leading European Deep Tech venture capital firm. Prior to founding APEX Ventures, Andreas was active as business angel and company builder. Before that he established global technology companies in the United States, the UK and Germany. In his current role, he supports portfolio companies at an early stage to help them find commercial traction and turn them into global organisations

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Agate Freimane

General Partner

Norrsken VC

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Agate S. Freimane is a General Partner at Norrsken VC, Europe's largest early stage impact venture capital fund. The fund is dedicated to investing in early-stage startups that leverage technology to address the world's most pressing challenges while building highly profitable businesses. Portfolio highlights include Northvolt, Einride, Heart Aerospace and 1KOMMA5°.

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Lana Graf

VC, Global Lead for Ai/Deep tech

IFC

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Lana Graf, PhD - is an investor and principal industry specialist at Disruptive Technologies and Funds dpt. at IFC, a private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where she leads Ai/ML and Deep tech verticals. At IFC, Lana is helping to bring advanced technologies to clients and industries across emerging markets, utilizing the WBG platform to maximize deep tech and AI's reach and impact worldwide. Prior to joining the WBG, Lana spent over a decade as a corporate executive in the Ai/Robotics and Industrial automation sector. She has an extensive expertise investing and implementing advanced systems and process automation solutions across several areas, including large data sets analytics, Ai/ML driven industrial automation solutions, enterprise grade software and hardware, supporting ai and robotics operations. Lana is Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumna. She serves on the multiple boards of Ai/Deep tech companies and funds, including the Engine – early-stage Deep tech fund spanned out of MIT, NELF – legal foundation where Lana’s focus is on the policies around advanced technologies – such as global implications of AI. She is a seasoned startup advisor, helping young entrepreneurs to learn from the experience of extensive network of Ai, Robotics and Deep tech professionals. Lana frequently speaks at Ai/Deep tech conferences and believes in the importance of supporting women leadership in the advanced technological fields.

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Caspar Schuchmann

CFO

Ineratec

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Prior to joining INERATEC as CFO in 2022, Caspar gained five years of experience in investment management with a focus on shipping and renewable energies. He raised over EUR 800m in equity and debt capital while contributing to the successful IPO of a shipping company.

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Victoria Sassoon

Associate Director of Capital Markets

Synonym Bio

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Victoria is Associate Director of Capital Markets at Synonym Bio. Synonym develops infrastructure for the bioeconomy by collaborating with companies bringing next-generation bioproducts to market, helping them plan, expand and scale seamlessly. Victoria is an infrastructure investment professional with experience in advisory and direct investment. Victoria holds a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering from Princeton University.

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Clara Chappaz

Director

La French Tech

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Clara was nominated Director of The French Tech Mission in November 2021, the French administration in charge of supporting the French startup ecosystem growth, part of the Ministry of Economy & Finance. Previously, she was Chief Business Officer at Vestiaire Collective (2019-2021), led Lyst's international expansion, and was Director at Zalora. Clara also founded Lullaby during her MBA at Harvard and consulted at BCG. She holds an MCs from ESSEC Business School.

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John Paschkewitz

Vice President

BCG X

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John Paschkewitz is Vice President for Advanced Technologies and Projects at BCG X. He works with clients in the consumer and industrial goods sectors to break compromises between performance, sustainability, and cost through the application of Deep Tech innovations. Prior to BCG, he was a DARPA program manager.

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Benjamin Saada

Founder & CEO

Fairmat

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Benjamin Saada, Fairmat's Founder & CEO, is an award-winning entrepreneur driving global carbon emissions reduction. With an engineering background and 15 patents, he launched Fairmat in 2020—a French deeptech firm focused on carbon fiber recycling, backed by a €43 million investment. Headquartered in France, Fairmat excels globally, offering advanced solutions for high-performance applications. Also serving as Non-Executive Chairman of Expliseat, a pioneer in ultra-light aircraft seats, Benjamin passionately champions environmental sustainability, leading Fairmat's team in innovating green deeptech recycling and expanding the company's global footprint in the US and beyond"

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Lisa Melton

Senior News Editor

Nature Biotechnology

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Dr Lisa Melton is Senior News Editor at Nature Biotechnology. Lisa has a PhD in Immunology, and a degree in Biochemistry from The University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She moved to the UK to work as a postdoc at the National Institutes of Medical Research in London (now the Crick Institute) and later switched to science journalism at the Novartis Foundation. Lisa has written for the Economist, the New Scientist, Scientific American, the Observer and Times, and for the last 15 years, has reported and edited biotech news with a translational bent for Nature Biotechnology and Nature.

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Sophie Purdom

Managing Partner

Planeteer Capital

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Sophie Purdom invests in and supports early-stage climate tech founders and their companies with Planeteer Capital. Planeteer leads investments globally at the Pre-Seed and Seed stage into hardware-enabled software for climate. Sophie has backed breakout companies like Remora, WeaveGrid, Amogy and Patch - often as the earliest, climate-first investor. Sophie also writes CTVC, a newsletter & strategic data platform with 70,000+ subscribers. Prior, Sophie launched an ESG fund, published a book on sustainable investing, worked at Bain & Co., and helped found and raise $65m at Kula Bio to develop carbon-negative fertilizer.

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Jane Reddin

Partner

AlbionVC

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Jane Reddin is AlbionVC's Partner for Talent and Platform, supports B2B software and healthtech founders in scaling human capital. Leading the AlbionVC platform team, she specializes in growth strategy, leadership team hiring, and organizational scaling. With 25 years of experience, she previously served as Talent Director at Balderton Capital and co-founded The Talent Stack, focusing on talent management for startups.

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Aude Guo

Co-founder

Innovafeed

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Aude Guo co-founded Innovafeed in 2016 as a tool to tackle one of humanity’s biggest challenge: climate change. Aude’s career path starts at Safran before leading her to McKinsey & Company where she developed a particular interest towards the food and agritech sector and its inherent impact on the environment. Aude has a double degree, in engineering from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussée (France), and a MBA from Collège des Ingénieurs (France)

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Marianne Hyltoft

General Partner

PSV DeepTech Fund

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Marianne Hyltoft is a General Partner at PSV DeepTech Fund, a pre-seed deeptech venture fund. She applies rigorous science and engineering to transform emerging science and technologies within GreenTech, HealthTech, and Industry 5.0 - into global solutions for humanity and the planet. She is an "engineer at heart" who loves technology, sustainability, investments, creating big visions, as well as building teams and partnerships. Previously, she served as a managing consultant at Bain & PA Consulting, Director at The Social Capital Fund, partner in the Venture Building Studio KRING Innovation, angel investor in several startups, and CEO/founder of a startup. When she invests, it is advantageous that she has a combined technical and commercial background and understands the challenges of the startup journey herself - from an idea in a lab to product/market fit and scaling. She holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Danish Technical University (DTU) and Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School (CBS).

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Jan Henrik Leisse

Co-Founder & CEO

eleQtron

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eleQtron’s Managing Director Jan Leisse is a graduate engineer with an additional MBA. He has many years of experience in turnaround management and corporate development and was previously Managing Director at mechanical engineering specialist Albrecht Bäumer. With his process-oriented work, he is the driving force behind eleQtron’s rapid growth.

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Jérôme Moreau

Partner & Director

BCG

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After ~15 years at BCG, Jérôme now leads BCG's Deep Tech Advisory & Ecosystem offering, aiming for disruptive and sustainable business model innovation by bridging over corporates and the deep tech

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Florian Steger

Managing Director

Deutsche Telekom hubraum Fund

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As entrepreneur and investor, Florian has extensive hands-on experience in building and financing technology startups from scratch. In his current role as MD of Deutsche Telekom’s seed Fund, he is responsible for the venture investments of one of Europe's preeminent corporate innovation hubs and leads an international team of investment professionals based in Berlin, Krakow and Tel Aviv.

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Olivier Tomat

Executive Director, Entrepreneurship & Acceleration

Genopole

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Olivier is Executive Director for Entrepreneurship at Genopole, where he backs biotech startups catalyzing bioeconomy industries. Olivier has over twenty years of startup generation, company development , and deeptech commercialisation. He has spent several years in setting up and managing various startup development programs in France and the UK and has been appointed as an innovation expert for the French Government in Northern California. Olivier is an an advocate of ecological transition being powered by biotechnology

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Eugenie Rives

Managing Director

X, The Moonshot Factory

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Eugenie currently leads a stealth moonshot at X exploring new applications for Large Language Models. Before becoming a project lead she headed up a portfolio of early stage projects exploring radical new ways to solve some of the world’s biggest problems using breakthrough technologies (from clean energy, chip design to Plant Biology).During her time at X Eugenie also led a robotics moonshot in logistics. Eugenie is passionate about bringing more diversity to the tech industry and co-founder the “Women@X” group – a community of women who aspire to improve women's representation and strengthen their success and opportunities at X.Before joining X, Eugenie led Operations for Google in France and Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Francophone Africa). Before Google, Eugenie worked for Alcatel in Mexico City, managing projects to connect cities and public infrastructure online.In parallel with her work at X, she is a partner at 50PartnersImpact, an advisor to RingMission, and a board member at TradeCafe.Eugenie grew up in Paris, and has a degree in applied mathematics (MASS Dauphine), a Master in Business and Management (EM-Lyon) and graduated from Singularity University in 2010. She lives in San Francisco with her 2 Franco-English-American kids (Shan 9 years, Alma 7 years). Eugenie balances the fast pace of technology leadership by practicing meditation and yoga.

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Hailey Eustace

Founder

Commplicated

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Hailey Eustace is the founder of Commplicated, a deeptech communications and branding firm that specialises in startups with complex technologies. Hailey has been working in deeptech for over 10 years, starting at the $485M Texas Emerging Technology Fund in Austin. She has vast experience leading communications for both large global brands and deeptech scaleups, has also advised hundreds of startups, and is a deeptech angel investor.

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Renita Kalhorn

Deep Tech Leadership Coach

The High EQ Founder

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Renita is an executive coach and advisor who’s worked with 1,300+ high-performers in 40 countries, from Fortune 500 executives and military Special Forces to Inc 5000 entrepreneurs and start-up founders. She specializes in helping deep tech founders level up their leadership so they can build loyal A-teams and execute on their vision. Creator of The High-EQ Founder training program, Renita also writes on leadership EQ for Forbes and speaks at deep tech conferences around the world. She has an MBA from INSEAD.

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Riam Kanso

CEO

Conception X

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Dr Riam Kanso is the founder and CEO of Conception X; the UK's leading venture programme for PhDs who want to build deep technology startups. Riam has a PhD in Neuroscience from Oxford University and has worked both in computational science and med tech; and has co-founded two startups before Conception X

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Yann Gaston-Mathé

CEO & Co-Founder

Iktos

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Yann is a seasoned R&D professional, strategy consultant and biotech entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience in pharma (Servier, Ipsen), molecular diagnostics (IntegraGen) and strategy consulting (Capgemini Consulting, BearingPoint, Cepton). He is also a skilled data scientist with several patents and publications in the field of biostatistics and biomarkers discovery and validation. Yann is Co-founder and CEO of Iktos, a leading chemical research Artificial Intelligence company focusing on medicinal chemistry and new drug design. Iktos is developing innovative AI technology based on deep generative models, which enables to design compounds that are optimized in silico to meet all the success criteria of a small molecule drug discovery project.

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Alan Clayton

Global Roaming Mentor

SOSV

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Alan has invested the last 13 years, with 1000+ startups, building the human capital across the SOSV portfolio, from Shanghai to San Francisco. Entrepreneur and executive coach since before coaching was a thing; once saved a company $15m in 5 minutes ! Providing tools and frameworks to help founders become better leaders.

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John Bell

CEO

HighTechXL

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John Bell is CEO at HighTechXL. He is passionate about sustainability and building impactful ventures that solve grand societal challenges. With his extensive experience in open innovation, new business creation, partnerships and strategy, he’s certain to fulfill that goal. Previously, he spent five years at Johnson & Johnson, where he led their internal accelerator, and at Philips Research he was responsible for open innovation, partnerships with tech institutes and collaboration with startups.

Amélie Quilichini
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Amélie Quilichini

CEO

Kolibri

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Bringing disruptive technologies where least expected has been the common theme of Amelie's career. Trained as an engineer, Amélie started started her career in 2014 working in a deeptech strategy consulting firm as both a consultant and intrapreneur. She further took a leap of faith in 2020, cofounding Kolibri, as CEO. Kolibri is reimagining cell manufacturing using acoustic waves (in other words, playing music to cells), to unlock the industrial production of advanced therapies.

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Nakia Melecio

Director & Senior Research Faculty

Georgia Institute of Technology

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Nakia Melecio, a Senior Research Faculty at Georgia Tech's Innovation Enterprise Institute and Principal at Venture Lab, aids researchers in commercializing Biotechnology, Energy, Defense, and Aerospace Technology. With expertise in securing investments from federal labs, universities, and corporations, Nakia also leads the MedTech Center of Excellence. This initiative supports early-stage medical device technologies, offering guidance in product realization and biotechnology. With a background spanning industry, academia, and government, Nakia brings extensive experience to technology transfer and innovation ecosystems globally. Nakia mentors technology startups and contributes to organizations like the U.S. Small Business Administration, embodying a commitment to advancing technology and entrepreneurship.

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Mike Harmon

Founder

Hardtech CMO

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Mike is a US-based expert on commercialization for deep tech startups (pre-seed through Series B.) He was the first marketing hire for 4 venture-backed startups, including two deep tech ventures (wireless power, molecular diagnostics.) His commercialization leadership has helped produce over $50M in revenue and $30M in venture investments. He is also a certified executive coach, helping teams and individuals navigate the challenges of work and life inside a startup.

Johannes Triebs
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Johannes Triebs

Partner

Earlybird Venture Capital

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Johannes is partner at Earlybird-X, the (pre-)seed fund of Earlybird Venture Capital. Earlybird‑X backs deep tech innovation, including AI, novel computing, industrial & climate tech, at the earliest stages – tapping into a network of leading European universities. Johannes is particularly excited about extraordinary teams with breakthrough technology solutions and can support them with his strong academic and industry network. Before joining Earlybird-X he founded 5P Capital, a micro VC around Aachen University, and was active in various mgmt. positions of university spin offs helping them to grow from 0 up to 10 Mio € in sales annually. He studied mechanical engineering in Aachen, Berkeley and Zurich and holds a PhD in mechanical engineering from Aachen University.

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Florian Schabus

Investor

Planet A Ventures

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Florian is an investor at Planet A Ventures, a European Climate Tech fund, and previously worked in operational roles in different startups. Florian studied Operations Research and holds a Masters degree in Strategy and International management from the University of St. Gallen.

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Christian zu Jeddeloh

Associate

Norrsken VC

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Christian is an investor at Norrsken VC, a Stockholm-based, early-stage impact fund. At Norrsken, he focuses on climate, hardware and tech bio investments. Prior to VC, Christian worked in a commercial role at the biotech platform start-up ATAI Life Sciences.

Past Speakers

Wayne Koff

Human Immunome Project
Founding President and CEO

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Dr. Wayne C. Koff, is founding President and CEO of the Human Immunome Project (formerly Human Vaccines Project), a non-profit research consortium creating AI models of the human immune system. In 2020, he was appointed Adjunct Professor, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and in 2019 was named by Foreign Policy as one of the 100 Global Thinkers who have had a profound impact on the planet.

Irina Borodina

BioPhero
Co-founder and CTO

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Dr. Irina Borodina is a successful biotech entrepreneur and scientist. She cofounded BioPhero, a biotech startup producing insect pheromones for environmentally friendly pest control, that has been acquired by FMC Corporation in 2022. Dr. Borodina also directs a research group at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), focused on the sustainable production of chemicals using yeast cell factories. .

Olivier Rolland

Toulouse White Biotechnology (TWB)
Managing Director

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Olivier Rolland, PhD in Chemistry, is Managing Director of TWB (Toulouse White Biotechnology), a world-renowned public-private research platform specialised in scaling industrial biotechnology projects from the lab to the plant. Prior to TWB, he held leading positions in major groups (Boeing, Michelin, Total) and notably worked on scaling fermentation-based biofuel and molecules production.

Ann Mettler

Breakthrough Energy
Vice President, Europe

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At Breakthrough Energy, Ann is working with European partners to accelerate clean tech innovation in the pursuit of climate neutrality and a net-zero emissions future. She has more than two decades’ experience in high-level public policy and strategy, operating at the intersection of technology, innovation, foresight and entrepreneurship. Previously, she served as Director-General and Head of the European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), the European Commission’s in-house think tank, and founded and ran the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based knowledge economy think tank.

Angeliki Rigos

MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design
Executive Director

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Dr. Angeliki Diane Rigos is a scientist, educator, and consultant interested in working across disciplines to promote sustainable solutions to global problems. She has nearly 40 years of experience as both an academic researcher and an energy specialist consultant. She is Executive Director of the MIT TATA Center for Technology & Design, a pioneering unit that trains and supports MIT researchers working to solve challenges facing communities in India and the developing world.

Megan Palmer

Stanford
Executive director in biopolicy and leadership

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Dr. Megan J. Palmer is the Executive Director of Bio Policy & Leadership Initiatives at Stanford University (Bio-polis). In this role, Dr. Palmer leads integrated research, teaching and engagement programs to explore how biological science and engineering is shaping our societies, and to guide innovation to serve public interests. Based in the Department of Bioengineering, she works closely both with groups across the university and with stakeholders in academia, government, industry and civil society around the world.

Andrew Hessel

GP-Write
Co-founder & Advisor

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Andrew Hessel, a pioneer and an expert in the field of synthetic biology, is a co-founder and advisor of Humane Genomics, an early-stage company developing synthetic viruses for canine and human oncology. He is also the co-founder and chairman of the Center of Excellence for Engineering Biology and the Genome Project, the international scientific effort to engineer large genomes, including the human genome. He is a former distinguished research scientist at Autodesk Life Sciences.

Andrea Maier

Centre for Healthy Longevity, @Age, NUS
Co-Director

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Andrea Maier is the Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity at the National University of Singapore as. Her research focuses on unraveling the mechanisms of aging and age-related diseases. She is heading international longitudinal cohort studies and geroscience interventions. During the last 12 years she has published more than 370 peer-reviewed articles, achieving an H index of 68, spearheading the significant contributions of her highly acclaimed innovative, global, multidisciplinary @Age research group. She is a frequent guest on radio and television programs to disseminate aging research and aninvited members of several international academic and health policy committees, including the WHO.

Cara Maesano

RMI
CDR Geochemical Lead

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Cara is a manager in the Strategic Analysis and Engagement group, with expertise on the mechanics of different carbon dioxide removal (CDR) pathways and their potential impacts. She has particular expertise in geochemical CDR techniques such as enhanced weathering, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and mineralization.

Cara has a background in particle physics, environmental epidemiology, and exposure science. She has worked in multiple international collaborations on topics ranging from fundamental science to the health impacts of climate change. She is also an On Deck Climate Tech Fellow.

Greg de Temmerman

Zenon Research
Managing Director

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Greg De Temmerman holds a PhD in experimental physics and has worked for over 15 years in the field of nuclear fusion. Between 2014 and 2020, he was scientific coordinator on the ITER project and he has published more than 230 papers in peer-reviewed journals. In 2020, he became Executive Director of Zenon Research, a non-profit think tank chaired by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle (Criteo) that identifies and analyses the scientific, technological and economic solutions needed for a future compatible with planetary limits. He is also a research associate at Mines-ParisTech PSL.

Stefano Buono

NewCleo
Co-founder & CEO

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Stefano Buono is an accomplished Italian physicist and alumnus of The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Until January 2018, Mr. Buono served as Chief Executive Officer and board member of Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA), an international radiopharmaceutical company he founded in 2002 and acquired in 2018 by Novartis for $3.9 billion. In 2021, Stefano Buono co-founded and incorporated UK-headquartered nuclear technology company newcleo, of which he is CEO.  In 2018 he founded Elysia Capital, focused on social impact investments in the field of Sustainable Innovation, Wellbeing, Education, Art and Culture.

Jean-Noël Barrot

Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications

Silvia Vignolini

Max Planck Institute
Director

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Prof Silvia Vignolini is the Director of the Sustainable and Bio-inspired Materials Department at the Max Planck for Colloid and Interfaces in Potsdam and a University Professor in Sustainability and Bio-inspired materials at the Chemistry Department in Cambridge. She studied Physics at the University of Florence, Italy. In 2009, she was awarded a PhD in Solid State Physics at the European Laboratory for non-Linear Spectroscopy and the Physics Department at the University of Florence. 

Vaitea Cowan

Enapter
Co-founder

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Vaitea Cowan is one of the three cofounders of Enapter. Sebastian, Jan, and Vaitea worked on the Phi Suea House in 2016, which became a lighthouse project for green hydrogen in Southeast Asia. In 2017, they cofounded Enapter on a mission to make green hydrogen affordable and accessible for everyone. They grew the team from 11 to 200 by 2021. Today, Vaitea heads Enapter’s communications and is based in the Berlin office. Vaitea is on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Energy 2020. Among other awards, she supported Enapter in winning the inaugural Earthshot Prize “Fix Our Climate” launched by Prince William and The Royal Foundation.  Her personal mission is to bring green hydrogen to the islands and to hire more women along the way.

Mijndert Van der Spek

Heriot-Watt University
Associate Professor

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Mijndert van der Spek is an Associate Professor at Heriot-Watt University with a track record in process design and optimization of CO2 capture, utilisation, and storage, and direct air capture technologies and systems, using process simulation, techno-economic assessment, life cycle assessment, and advanced uncertainty analysis to inform decision making on the feasibility of technologies and processes. Mijndert has a keen interest in adsorption-based CO2 capture, notably from the air and his team works on understanding the impact of humidity on the adsorption performance of materials and processes. He is the principal or co-investigator on several UK and EU funded research projects, the vice-chair of the EU networking Action TrANsMIT, Associate Editor for the journal Frontiers in Climate and member of the IEAGHG Cost Network where he led activities on new guidelines for technoeconomic assessment.

Janne Poranen

Spinnova
Co-founder & Executive Chairman

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Born in 1972, Poranen is CEO and Co-founder of Spinnova. Poranen looks at the bigger picture for the company. Before spinning the business off from VTT with Salmela, he headed VTT’s Fibers and Bio-based materials research area. He also held other managerial positions in his ten years with the VTT and was a visiting scientist at the University of Maine. Poranen holds a PhD in physics, completed by business and innovation leadership training in IMD Business School. He is a hybrid of scientist, industrial expert and entrepreneur.

Frauke Kracke

Stripe

Science Lead

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Frauke Kracke is Head of Science at Stripe Climate and pushes our scientific thinking on the most innovative technological solutions for permanent removal of atmospheric carbon. She holds a PhD in biotechnology from the University of Queensland.

Ezhil Subbian

String Bio
CEO

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Ezhil is a scientist, innovator, thinker, hiking enthusiast and a citizen of the world. Ezhil is driven by a passion to leverage the power of biology to deliver sustainable and cost-effective solutions. Her experience in biobased product development over the last 20 years helps her bring deep technical expertise to the work at String. Ezhil’s work was most recently recognized with the Women Transforming India Award 2018 from United Nations/NITI Aayog.

Christopher Wareham

Utrecht University
Assistant Professor

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Christopher Wareham received his doctorate from the European School of Molecular Medicine and the University of Milan. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Ethics Institute at Utrecht University and Honorary Associate Professor at the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Much of his research focuses on the ethical implications of ageing and life extension. In this research area, he has edited a volume, The Cambridge Handbook of the Ethics of Ageing, published in 2022. He also works on the ethics of emerging biotechnologies, and published work often views them through the lens of African ethical systems.

Christine Gould

Thought For Food
Founder & CEO

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Christine is a global leader in agri-food-tech innovation, an energizing community-builder & an activator of breakthrough ideas that create lasting change in food and agriculture. As the Founder & CEO of Thought For Food, she galvanized a community of 30,000+ entrepreneurs in 180+ countries who are dedicated to transforming food systems. The programs she has developed have generated 8000+ business ideas and launched 70+ startups.

Andrew Payne

E11 Bio
Co-founder & CEO

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Andrew is a biotechnology developer, inventor, and co-founder at E11 Bio, where he brings pioneering experience with emerging spatial and molecular methods, including super-resolution microscopies and spatially resolved approaches to genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. Andrew trained in Engineering Physics at the University of Toronto, and joined Ed Boyden’s group at MIT for his PhD studies to pioneer technologies for neural circuit architecture mapping at the scale of mammalian brains. In his PhD, he developed a disruptive approach to spatially resolved molecular microscopy – a technology whose basic principles are important for brain architecture mapping – scaling from four colors to four billion digital colors over four years (Payne et al, Science 2021). Andrew has authored three peer-reviewed publications, and holds one issued U.S. patent and three patents pending.

Nolen Gertz

University of Twente
Assistant Professor

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Nolen Gertz is Assistant Professor of Applied Philosophy at the University of Twente, a Senior Researcher at the 4TU.Centre for Ethics and Technology, and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Global Center for the Future. He is the author of Nihilism (MIT Press 2019), Nihilism and Technology (Rowman & Littlefield International 2018), and The Philosophy of War and Exile (Palgrave-Macmillan 2014).

Benjamin Tincq

Marble
Co-founder & CEO

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Benjamin Tincq is co-founder of Good Tech Lab, an agency that supports technological and systemic responses to global challenges – restoring climate and ecosystems while delivering progress for all. He is co-author of the report “On the Frontiers of Impact Tech” which analyses 180 areas of technological innovation contributing to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals

Benjamin is an engineer by training, and was previously co-founder of a think-tank dedicated to digital social innovation (Ouishare), as well as a consultant in digital strategy and green tech. He has worked with companies such as Vinci, Michelin, MAIF, Autodesk, Castorama, ADEME and the City of Paris.

Ulrich Betz

Merck
Vice President of Innovation

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Ulrich Betz, Vice President of Innovation at Merck, is responsible for innovation management and strategic academic collaborations at Merck. He is an accomplished R&D manager with >20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, including positions in the President’s Office at Merck Biopharma and positions reporting directly to the Heads of Research and Development at Bayer and Merck. In his current role he designed and implemented for example the Merck Innovation Cup, the Curious2018-Future Insight Conference, the Merck Future Insight Prize, the Darmstadt Science Declaration, the Merck Research Grants and Challenges, the Compound Synthesis Challenge, the Johann Anton Merck Award, the idea competition innospire and the BioMed X Outcubator.

Lana Graf

International Finance Corporation
VC, Deep Tech

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Lana Graf is an impact investor and principal industry specialist at Disruptive Technologies and Funds dpt. at IFC, a private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where she leads deals in Ai/ML and Deep tech. Lana’s goal at IFC is to help bringing advanced technologies to worldwide clients and emerging markets. World Bank group platform is a perfect fit to help with smart and supported adoption of disruptive technologies, through access to countries, sectors, partners and clients of IFC.

Prior to joining the World Bank, Lana spent over a decade as a corporate executive in the Ai/Robotics and Industrial automation sector.

Ashwin Shashindranath

Energy Impact Partners
Partner

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Ashwin Shashindranath brings a unique combination of 15 years of investment experience and hands-on entrepreneurial experience at startups. Ashwin looks for and works with entrepreneurs who are genuinely excited about being agents of change in the climate tech landscape. Prior to joining EIP, Ashwin was a Managing Director in Macquarie Capital’s Green Investment group leading venture capital and growth equity investments in energy and mobility transition.

Eric Trusiewicz

Stanford University
Fellow

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Eric Trusiewicz is a specialist on heavy industrial decarbonization, especially cement & concrete. He is active as a board member, advisor and operating executive working with venture-backed cleantech startups. Eric has worked on cement decarbonization as an entrepreneur in residence at the cleantech venture capital fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures, as a fellow at Stanford University, and prior to that has a decade of experience in the cement industry in a variety of executive roles across Europe and the United States. 

Presca Ahn

BOLD
Investment Director

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Prior to BOLD, Presca was an investor at the private equity fund Five Arrows. Previously, she had been an investment banker at Rothschild & Co. During her earlier career, she was a curator and museum director. Presca is a graduate with distinction of Yale College (BA) and the London School of Economics (MSc), the latter as a Fulbright Scholar. She also holds an MBA from INSEAD

Karine Baudin

L’Oreal R&I
Strategic partnering lead

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Karine Baudin has over 20 years of experience in business development, open innovation strategy, negotiation of public-private R&I partnerships, fundraising, and alliance management.She joined L’Oréal Research and Innovation in 2015 as business developer, part of the Open Innovation group, in charge of setting up partnerships for R&I division. Previously, she had research experience as a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Francisco and as a research assistant at UC Berkeley. 

Ingrid Kelly

IST cube
Partner

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Ingrid is a Partner at early stage deeptech VC fund IST cube, where she focuses on life science investments. In parallel, she supports researchers at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in technology transfer matters, giving her a unique perspective on academic spinoffs from both sides of the table. Ingrid holds a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Cambridge and is an IP expert and European Patent Attorney.

Laura Cozzi

International Energy Agency
Chief Energy Modeler

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Laura Cozzi is part of IEA’s senior management team and was appointed the Agency’s Chief Energy Modeller in 2018. As Chief Energy Modeller Ms. Cozzi oversees the Agency’s work on outlooks and forecasts. Ms. Cozzi’s responsibilities include the annual World Energy Outlook, the IEA flagship publication.

Frank Thelen

Freigeist Capital
Founder & CEO

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Frank Thelen is a European serial founder, technology investor and TV personality. Since 1994, he has founded and managed technology and design-driven companies. In his role as the founder and CEO of Freigeist Capital, he focuses on early-phase deep tech investments. He has written two best-selling books, Startup-DNA and 10xDNA. Frank is Chief Executive Officer of the 10xDNA Disruptive Technologies Fund.

Patrick Nathen

Lilium
Co-founder

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Patrick Nathen is co-founder of Lilium, currently working in chief engineering flight mechanics. In his previous roles at Lilium, he built up multiple departments, among others the global product team, where he led the physical aircraft and digital product strategy, product design and overall product market fit. Prior to this, he built up the calculation and design team, shaping the architecture of the aircraft. Patrick holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the Technical University of Munich.

Jason Palmer

Journalist
The Economist

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Since 2019 Jason Palmer has hosted “The Intelligence”, the award-winning daily podcast from The Economist, where he was previously a science & technology correspondent. He was a fellow of the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT in 2014, and has worked also at the BBC and New Scientist. Prior to taking up journalism he was a physicist working on ultrafast spectroscopy.

Ivan Pavlovic

Natixis CIB
Executive director, Energy transition specialist

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Ivan Pavlovic joined Natixis in 2008 to cover European Utilities and Oil & Gas majors in the fixed income market. Since 2018, he has been developing expert content on the financing of energy transition. Areas of focus mainly include trends in compliance and voluntary carbon markets, development and financing of green hydrogen projects and carbon capture processes.

Lauri Menoud

At one ventures
Founding Partner

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Laurie is a founding Partner at At One Ventures, where she backs deep tech startups catalyzing planet-positive industries. She is a board member at Avalo, Ascend Elements, Helios, Noon Energy, Precision AI, Puna Bio, and Simplifyber. Laurie has over a decade of deep tech commercialization, company building, and venture capital experience. She spent several years in the chemical industry (Solvay, BASF) and built a dozen ventures out of US Defense research programs (SRI International). Biotechnologist by training, Laurie is an ecological transition advocate.

Richard Hayhurst

RHA Communications
Founder

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Starting with Dolly the Sheep and the Human Genome project, Richard has helped companies, countries, NGOs and research centers successfully communicate the benefits of their science to stakeholders over the last 30 years. With partners across Europe, his new agency RHA Communications specialises in providing deep tech start-ups with integrated communications packages.

Gwen Cheni

Khosla Ventures
Partner

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Gwen is a Partner on the Investment Team at Khosla Ventures.
She was previously a Partner at IndieBio/SOSV covering bio and AI. Prior to IndieBio, Gwen was the founder and Managing Partner of Galapagos Ventures, an early stage venture fund focused on the intersection of biology and AI/ML. She was an early investor in SyntheX, Intrinsic Medicine, and Huue. 

Kerry Baldwin

IQ Capital
Managing Partner

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Co-founder, Managing Partner IQ Capital – UK deeptech early stage VC $1bn AUM investing from seed to – £30m from 4th Fund and Growth Fund. Chair, BVCA (2021/22). Honorary Fellow in Entrepreneurship at Cambridge University, Independent IC member for British Patient Capital – Life Science, Co-invest programmes and Future Fund:Breakthrough. Advisor to Governments on VC and R&D ecosystems.  Specialist in Regtech, Suptech, Cyber, big data, defence and security investments and guiding founders through GTM, competitive intelligence and mar-tech scale.

Hal Hodson

The Economist
Journalist

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Hal Hodson is The Economist’s special projects writer, based in London. He joined the paper in 2016 as science and technology correspondent, writing about face recognition, tigers and the brain. In 2018 he was named Britain’s best science writer. In 2019 he moved to Hong Kong to take up a new role as Asia technology correspondent. He returned to London during the pandemic to join the paper’s covid team, writing on the immune system, vaccine manufacturing and data science. His work currently focuses on technology trade and decarbonisation.

Robert Gallenberger

Matterwave Ventures
Founding Partner

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Robert Gallenberger is a Founding Partner at Matterwave Ventures. Before Matterwave, he was one of the partners in the btov Industrial Technologies team. After starting his career with the BMW Group in production roles, he discovered the world of venture capital investments during his MBA studies at London Business School. After working as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group in London, he joined the Belgium investment firm Gimv to help scale the organization’s new Munich office and expand its smart industries investment activity from early-stage venture to small-cap buyouts.

Patrick Rouvillois

Natixis CIB
Head of the Natixis CIB Tech Hub

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In 2005, he headed product marketing in London and then consumer marketing for Orange. In 2008, he became Executive Director of Carrefour, in charge of marketing, e-Commerce and merchant services. In 2012, he launched Barnes & Noble’s tech business, Nook, internationally. In 2015, he joined the Boston Consulting Group as Associate Director of BCG Digital Ventures. In 2020, he joined the group Edenred as Chief Innovation Officer in Asia-Pacific, member of the Executive Committee.Patrick has worked for 30 years in tech and digital, on the launch of new companies and their transformation.

Paavo Raisanen

Maki VC
Partner

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Paavo is a Partner at Maki.vc, working with pre-seed and seed stage deep tech companies across Europe. His investments span the deep tech space from sustainable textiles to industrial climate tech, alternative proteins and nanotechnology. As a former entrepreneur and startup executive, Paavo has acquired practical knowledge on commercialisation and business building from strategy to operations.

Omar Zahr

Tandem Launch
CTO

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Omar Zahr began his career in venture capital after graduating with a PhD in chemistry from McGill University in 2015 and subsequently pursuing a deep interest in nurturing university inventions to commercial maturity. 8 years later, Omar Zahr is now the CTO of TandemLaunch, a VC fund and startup foundry that provides a turn-key solution to company creation for university researchers looking to see their inventions transformed into legitimate, high-value and socially impactful companies. 

Sergey Jakimov

LongeVC
Managing Partner

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Sergey is a serial entrepreneur, having co-founded 3 deep-tech ventures (including Koatum and Vortex Oil Engineering) and raised more than $50 million in venture funding. He has advised several other startups in the therapeutics space on fundraising, IP protection, and clinical trial strategies. He is also a Visiting Lecturer to several universities on venture capital and intellectual property rights and co-authored a master’s program in Technology Law for the Riga Graduate School of Law. 

Kelly Chen

DCVC
Partner

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Kelly is a Partner at DCVC, a $3B AUM deep tech VC in the Silicon Valley. She backs early stage entrepreneurs building revolutionary tech in AI, robotics, manufacturing, logistics, and sustainability. Her board roles include Agility Robotics, Fulfil.ai, SafelyYou, Smartex, Brimstone, and Recycleye. Kelly’s interest has always been in data and optimization, from math competitions to a career as a fixed income trader. 

Pauliina Meskanen

Survivaltech.club.
Founder

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Pauliina Meskanen is the founder of Survivaltech.club, a popular newsletter on deeptech climate innovation. She is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Lifeline Ventures, a Helsinki-based early-stage VC, and a venture partner at Climate Capital Bio, a US-based biotech climate VC. Previously, Pauliina helped commercialize energy innovations at VTT, the Finnish state-backed research institution.

Seth Bannon

Fifty Years
Managing Partner

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Seth Bannon is a Founding Partner at Fifty Years. Seth has seeded a range of deep tech startups shaping the world for the better — companies like Upside Foods (culturing meat to eat), Solugen (engineering enzymes to make carbon negative chemicals), and Astranis (small satellites to cover the Earth in Internet).Passionate about helping more PhDs start startups, he and Fifty Years published the Spinout Playbook, a guide to spinning out of academia.

Constantijn Van Oranje

Techleap
Special Envoy

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Constantijn van Oranje leads Techleap.nl, the accelerator for the tech ecosystem in the Netherlands. As Special Envoy, he is on a mission to turn The Netherlands into a unicorn nation. He and his team connect the Dutch tech ecosystem to help ambitious and
promising Dutch tech companies grow fast internationally by improving their access to capital, market, talent and technologies.Constantijn co-founded StartupFest Europe, which is still the biggest start-up event ever organized in The Netherlands.

Helen Albert

Science Journalist

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Helen Albert is a freelance science journalist and senior editor at Inside Precision Medicine.Prior to going freelance, she was editor-in-chief at Labiotech, an English-language, digital publication based in Berlin focusing on the European biotech industry. Before moving to Germany, she worked at a range of different science and health-focused publications in London. She was editor of The Biochemist magazine and blog, but also worked as a senior reporter at Springer Nature’s medwireNews for a number of years. 

Lorie Hamelin

INRAE
Professor

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Lorie Hamelin, laureate of the 2017 French presidential climate call “Make our planet great again” (Project Cambioscop), heads a research team at the Federal University of Toulouse. Her research focuses on the environmental performance of strategies to transit towards low fossil carbon economies. Counting with 15y of research experience in Canada, Denmark, Poland and France, she developed early methods for life cycle assessments related with bio-based systems, including land use changes effects (PhD 2013).

Krijn de Nood

Meatable
CEO

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In his role as CEO, Krijn guides Meatable’s strategic direction. Before founding Meatable together with Daan Luining, he worked for 6 years at management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, where he focused on strategy development and operations. After leaving the company he planned to take a year off, but he quickly met Daan and together they founded Meatable. Through Meatable, Krijn is realizing his ambition to contribute to several of the biggest challenges of his generation.

Guillaume Boissonnat

Pili
CSO

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Guillaume is the Chief Scientific & Industrial Officer of PILI, a french biotechnology and green chemistry company. PILI develops and produces sustainable high-performance dyes and pigments. PILI has scaled up to the ton-scale several biobased chemicals as well as associated down-stream and chemical processes.

Nicolas Goeldel

BCG
Deep Tech Mission

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At the deep tech mission of BCG, Nicolas is driving change towards a sustainable future by aligning technological advances and business opportunities in a way that breaks the compromise between sustainability and profitability.
To this end, he can draw upon his experience pursuing a PhD at the interface between biology, chemistry and physics at EPFL, assessing new, science-based technologies and thinking through how to anticipate their impact on our future at Hello Tomorrow as well as directing the development of digital health tools as a Mercator Fellow for Médecins Sans Frontières in the Middle East.

Francesco Volpe

Renaissance Fusion
CEO

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Francesco is a physicist and has been passionate about fusion since the age of 16. He dedicated his studies to heating, diagnosing and stabilizing fusion plasmas and liquid metals. After working on all major magnetic fusion concepts, he concluded that simplified stellarators are the shortest road to net fusion energy and a start-up is the fastest vehicle to it, so he co-founded Renaissance Fusion in 2020.

Hemai Parthasarathy

X, The Moonshot factory
Head of Rapid Evaluation

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Hemai Parthasarathy leads a team at X, the Moonshot Factory, which probes the horizons of scientific and engineering excellence to create groundbreaking technological opportunities. Before joining X, she was Scientific Director of the Thiel Foundation, where she co-created Breakout Labs, a philanthropic program to support bold scientist-entrepreneurs. She was also CSO and Founding Partner in Breakout Ventures. Hemai was previously North American editor for Nature and a founding editor of PLOS. She holds a Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from M.I.T. and a B.A. in Biophysics from The Johns Hopkins University.

Peter Vanlaeke

Solvay Ventures
Partner

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Peter is Partner at Solvay Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Solvay Group, a global leader in specialty chemicals and advanced materials. Established in 2004, with a global footprint, Solvay Ventures has over $100m assets under management. Solvay Ventures manages a portfolio of funds and direct investments to support the Group’s innovation efforts. In addition to providing capital to start-up companies, Solvay Ventures leverages Solvay capabilities and network to generate business synergies and partnerships between the start-ups and Solvay’s BUs and Innovation Platforms. 

Marianne Abib-Pech

BBV- T1ST
Managing Partner

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Marianne is the Managing Partner of BBV-T1ST, an innovative cross-border seed-stage venture fund backing mission-driven founder scientists who are accelerating industrial transitions in humanity’s critical sectors: Manufacturing, Food and Health. Passionate about investment and impact, Marianne has more than two decades of experience in cross-border Corporate Finance with the last 10 years focused on startups and VC in Europe, US and Israel. 

Alice Toderi

Hello Nature
CMO

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Alice Toderi has been the Chief Marketing Officer at HELLO NATURE (formerly Italpollina) for nearly seven years. With a background in healthcare and beauty, Alice brought a consumer-focused mindset to Hello Nature, which she drew on as the driver behind the rebranding of the group. She also managed the integration of the marketing department at a global level, focusing the efforts on the biostimulants sector of the group, building the awareness through several initiatives and the creation of the biostimulant.com platform. 

Andra Keay

Silicon Valley Robotics
Managing Director

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Andra Keay is the Managing Director of Silicon Valley Robotics, the non-profit industry association founded by advanced robotics companies to let the rest of the world know what’s really happening in robotics. An experienced strategist, she speaks globally about the investments and the impact of robotics in society. Andra is also the VP of Global Robotics at AMT, a Visiting Scholar at CITRIS People and Robots Lab, an Advisor to Circuit Launch, a partner at The Robotics Hub, founder of Women in Robotics, VP of IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s Industrial Activities Board, Deep Tech Lead for IEEE Entrepreneurship, and creator of global Robotics Clusters.

Pae Wu

IndieBio, SOSV
General Partner and CTO

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Pae is a General Partner at SOSV and CTO at IndieBio, where she is responsible for portfolio management and technical oversight.

Prior to joining IndieBio, Pae served as the Scientific Director of Telefónica’s moonshot factory, Alpha (in Barcelona). She was Science Director at the US Office of Naval Research – Global (out of Singapore), and technical consultant at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Her whole career, Pae has been investing in high-risk solutions to intractable problems for national defense, humanity, and the planet. She is especially passionate about bridging engineered materials and systems to biology.

Stéphanie Paix

Natixis
Chief Executive Officer

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Stéphanie Paix is in charge of Groupe BPCE’s global businesses and Chief Executive Officer of Natixis since December 3, 2022. She started her career in the Audit Department of the Banques Populaires from 1988 to 1994. She became regional manager at Banque Populaire Rives de Paris and then manager in charge of the back office and organization from 1994 to 2002.She then moved to Natixis Banque Populaire as head of the back offices of the Corporate Banking division. In 2006, she was appointed General Manager of Natixis Factor and became a member of the Executive Committee of Coface. In 2018, Stéphanie Paix became Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of the General Inspection Division of Groupe BPCE. 

Igor Kocis

GA Drilling
CEO

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Igor Kocis is a co-founder of GA Drilling and has over 30 years of engineering, business leadership, and serial entrepreneur experience. As CEO of GA Drilling, Igor is fully dedicated to bringing affordable, cheaper, and cleaner energy to everyone in the world. Igor is responsible for GA Drilling’s company strategy and business management, leading the strategic investment process and driving the company from its R&D stages to the first pilots. Igor was selected for the exclusive list of the top 100 innovators in CEE, and the company has been repeatedly ranked among the best European innovation companies. Igor received an M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Slovak University of Technology.

Olivier Tomat

Genopole
Executive Director for Entrepreneurship

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Olivier is Executive Director for Entrepreneurship at Genopole, where he backs biotech startups catalyzing bioeconomy industries. Olivier has over twenty years of startup generation, company development , and deeptech commercialisation. He has spent several years in setting up and managing various startup development programs in France and the UK and has been appointed as an innovation expert for the French Government in Northern California. Olivier is an an advocate of ecological transition being powered by biotechnology

Jean-David Malo

EIC
Director

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Jean-David Malo became Head of Unit in charge of regional aspects in DG R&I (2006-2010), of the Unit in charge of increasing private finance and closing market gaps by expanding existing EU innovative financial instruments (see RSFF) and by developing new ones in the fields of debt (including guarantees) and equity financing (InnovFin) (2011-2013) ; and of
the Unit in charge of the support to Horizon 2020 SMEs (i.e. EUROSTARS II, SME Instrument and the Fast Track to Innovation) and on Financial Instruments and State Aids (2014-2017).In 2019, following the European Council’s request to set up the European Innovation Council (EIC), he became Director of the EIC Task Force.
Since April 2021 he is the Director of the Agency for EIC and SMEs – EISMEA.

Antoine Gourévitch

BCG
Managing Director & Senior Partner

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Antoine Gourévitch is a member of BCG X, Boston Consulting Group’s tech build and design unit, specifically leading global efforts in building new products, services, and businesses with deep tech. He also leads the firm’s work in data and digital platforms, as well as its research into emerging technologies.
Since joining BCG in 1995, Antoine has worked extensively with companies in the automotive and financial services industries on digital and information technology. Antoine has deep experience in strategy and innovation, having helped a number of automotive manufacturers and suppliers redefine their distribution and sales plans, improve commercial competitiveness, and launch digital strategies.

Karin Santana Rodriguez

Polytone Laser
CEO and Co-founder

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Karin Santana Rodriguez in is an experienced leader who has successfully performed academic, management and entrepreneurial roles in Venezuela, USA and Canada. Karin obtained her BSc degree in General Sciences at Fordham University (New York, USA), which led her to work as a research associate at FUNDALAS, Foundation for Interdisciplinary Research and Development in Caracas. Having also acquired administrative experience at two Fortune-500 companies, Karin co-founded and is the CEO of Polytone Laser Inc. – a Canadian MedTech startup that seeks to develop a breakthrough non-invasive laser technology for the systemic treatment of solid tumors and other complex diseases.

Przemek Ben Paczek

Nevomo
CEO and cofounder

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Przemek is the CEO of Nevomo and co-founder of the company. Previously, he held the position Chief Product Officer responsible for coordinating the development of Nevomo’s products, including supervision of R&D projects and collaborations in technology areas. Przemek has over fifteen years of managerial experience in finance and sales, gained mostly in private banking, fund management, real estate brokerage and land development sectors. He is a member of the Urban Land Institute and a Ph.D. candidate at Kozminski University in Warsaw (Management in New Technologies). 

Jérôme Moreau

BCG
Partner & Director

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Jérôme leads our Deep Tech Advisory & Ecosystem offering, aiming for disruptive and sustainable business model innovation by bridging over corporates and the deep tech ecosystem. He has extensive experience on innovation processes, product R&D in high tech industries, agile transformation & program management. Jérôme received his Master in Business Studies from HEC Paris in 2002, and is also an exchange graduate from Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. Formerly with Renault Nissan, he joined BCG in 2011 and brings 20+ years of experience. He is passionate about sustainable development, philosophy & the ethical use of breakthrough technologies.

Susanne K. Schorsch

Amadeus capital
Partner

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Susanne joined Amadeus in 2023 and is a Partner in Amadeus’ European early-growth deep tech strategy.

She is a professional venture capital investor and angel since 2014 and has led and co-led more than 20 investments in deeptech including health and biotech.

Susanne was previously a Partner at Verve Ventures. She has served as board member or observer on several of her portfolio companies such as: CREAL, a leader in lightfield technology for VR and AR; antibody discovery platform MemoTherapeutics; high throughput organism-on-chip animal testing alternative Nagi Bioscience; retinal biomarker company Earlysight, AI assisted diagnostics provider Medimaps; breakthrough oral delivery system plaform Biograil and next generation gene therapy company Somagenetix.

Frederic Vacher

Dassault Systèmes
Head of Innovation

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Frederic is now Head of Innovation and founded the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab in 2015, an open innovation lab accelerating disruptive innovations that give a strong positive impact to the society. He designed this initiative to be very inclusive, open and collaborative through communities and mentoring. Connecting people, sharing know how and knowledge on a cloud platform makes it possible, and scalable.

Hattan Ahmed

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Entrepreneurship Director

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Hattan is the Entrepreneurship Director at KAUST delivering the university’s entrepreneurship vision. He
believes in young people as change agents of the future and that universities play a key role in creating
national economic impact. In his role as an advocate for innovation, Hattan works across the entire
entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Kingdom, delivering entrepreneurship training, creating corporate
innovation programs, and investing in startups that will contribute to the national transformation
agenda.

Chayma Bouazza

PASQAL
Regional Manager Middle East

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Chayma BOUAZZA is the Regional Manager Middle East at PASQAL, a full-stack quantum hardware player offering quantum processors based on neutral atoms technology. She is in charge of building collaborations with public and private stakeholders with the goal to build a quantum ecosystem in the region. Previously she worked as an Innovation Consultant on a wide range of topics such as mobility, nanotechnology, renewables, etc. Chayma has a PhD in ultracold atoms from École
Normale Supérieure (Paris – France).

Yair Reem

Extantia
Partner

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Yair Reem is a Partner at Extantia Capital, a climate-first venture capital firm accelerating the path to a decarbonised world. Extantia backs daring entrepreneurs whose breakthrough ventures can significantly reduce emissions and accelerate the transition to a decarbonised society. Previously, Yair was Managing Director at Hasso Plattner Ventures and a cyber technology leader at Israel’s Unit 8200. Yair holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Technion (Israel), Executive MPA from Hertie (Germany), and AMP from Wharton (USA)

Kinga Stanislawska

EIC fund
Founder of European Women in VC

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Kinga has 20 years of experience in investments and finance. She is founder of Experior VC, investing in companies across all verticals with a CEE nexus. She is founder of European Women in VC platform and IC member of the EIC Fund. Kinga was management board member of Polish VC Association for 5 years. She sits on the board of private and public companies. She is named one of the TOP 50 of Europe’s most influential women in the start-up and venture capital space by EU Startups and top 50 women in tech in Europe by Forbes.

Simon Maechling

Bayer
Innovation Manager

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With >15 years’ experience in AgTech R&D, Simon plays a central role in fostering strategic relationships around the globe and developing programs to enable novel ways of accelerating internal and external innovation to support Bayer’s industry leading pipeline and he is a strong champion for both external and pre-competitive partnering as a driving force for innovation.

Hubert Chaperon

Owkin
COO

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Hubert is the Chief Operating Officer at Owkin where he leads strategic planning and operations. He brings 10+ years of product management and strategy experience from the industrial biotechnology industry. Hubert started his career with synthetic biology pioneer Amyris, and held various roles leading the development and commercialization of novel molecules for the consumer care market. A graduate from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, Hubert also holds a Masters in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Clara Chappaz

La French Tech
Director

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Prior to joining the French Tech Mission, Clara held various management positions in the startup ecosystem all around the world. From 2019 to 2021, she was the Chief Business Officer of Vestiaire Collective, the French unicorn peer-to-peer marketplace for premium and luxury pre-owned fashion.

Matthias Meiner

Lilium
Co-Founder & Chief Engineer – Systems Integration

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Matthias Meiner is one of Lilium’s four Co-Founders and currently holds the position of Chief Engineer Systems
Integration.
He studied Mechatronics and Information Technology at the Technical University Munich. When he met Daniel
Wiegand in 2014, he had just started a PhD in Robotics. Fascinated by the technology and vision behind the
Lilium Jet he decided to quit his PhD and joined Daniel, Sebastian, and Patrick as a co-founder of Lilium.

Emmanuel Vincent

Aenitis Technologies

CEO

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Emmanuel is CEO at Aenitis Technologies and Senior Entrepreneur in Residency at Agoranov. He holds a Master degree in Biology, a specialized Master in Biotech Companies’ management (Grenoble Management School) and an Executive MBA (UQAM and Paris Dauphine). Emmanuel has a strong professional experience in start-up launching strategic intelligence in the biotech. He supported over 50 start-ups launching such as Doctolib, Cardiologs, Eligo Bioscience, Corwave or DNA Script.

Yury Vasilkov

Gamaya
CEO

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Gamaya is a Swiss-based AgTech startup with a mission to become a key player in the agriculture decarbonization space. We provide tools to measure environmental impact of farming and to drive the implementation of regenerative agriculture practices at scale. Our team passionate about sustainable cultivation systems that reduce the carbon footprint of farming, improve soil health, and increase agricultural resilience to future climate change challenges.

Jean-Francois Bobier

The Boston Consulting Group
Partner & Director

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Jean-François Bobier is a core member of Boston Consulting Group’s Technology Advantage practice with a focus on technology-driven transformation at scale. Since joining BCG in 2004, Jean-François has partnered with clients across multiple industries on projects related to digital, software engineering, agile, and deep tech.Jean-François leads BCG’s R&D initiative on quantum computing and technology and digital organization. Prior to joining the firm, Jean-François worked as an IT architect for Fidelity Investments and IBM Business Consulting Services.

Sita Sonty

The Boston Consulting Group
Partner and Associate Director, Aerospace & Defense

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S. Sita Sonty leads Boston Consulting Group’s Commercial Space team, working to expand the client base for the space economy. She serves as a senior BCG Defense and Security expert and a BCG Federal core member, advising sovereign governments on defense, civil, and commercial space strategic trends. Sita helps shape BCG’s aerospace and defense corporate strategy, risk, sales projection, and go-to-market functions.

Renita Kalhorn

Deep Tech Leadership Coach + Forbes Contributor

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Renita Kalhorn is an executive coach, Forbes contributor and creator of The High-EQ Founder. She’s worked with 1,300+ clients in 40 countries and specializes in helping deep tech founders level up as leaders so they can execute on their vision.

Brian Burg

Pixium Vision

Director R&D

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Brian grew up in Luxembourg and studied mechanical engineering in Switzerland (ETH Zurich) and Boston, U.S.A. (MIT). He has worked on liver perfusion (Wyss Zurich, CH) and the structural heart (CorWave, FR & Alluent Medical, FR), before turning his attention to the eye at Pixium Vision as Director of R&D.
Over the last 15+ years he has established a proven track record of bringing the most ambitious projects from the drawing board to viable products.

Tony Fadell

Build Collective
Principal

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Tony Fadell is an active investor and entrepreneur with a 30+ year history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people’s lives. He is the Principal at Build Collective, an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. Currently, Build Collective is coaching over 200+ startups innovating game-changing technologies. He is the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the “Internet of Things.” Tony was the SVP of Apple’s iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents. 22)

Lisa Melton

Nature Biotechnology
Senior Editor

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Lisa Melton is Senior News Editor at Nature Biotechnology. Lisa has a PhD in Immunology and a Biochemistry degree from The University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. She moved to the UK to work as a postdoc at the National Institutes of Medical Research in London (now the Crick) and later switched to science journalism at the Novartis Foundation. She has written for the Economist, the New Scientist, Scientific American, the Observer and Times, and for the last 14 years, has been covering biotech news for Nature Biotechnology.

Jonny Everett

Marble
Founding Partner

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Jonny is a Founding Partner at Marble, a climate deeptech venture studio solving hard climate problems. He’s mentored over 200 future founders on their journey from pre-company to venture backed startup. Passionate about the potential of individuals who can create radical change.

Eric Dusseux

Breakthrough Energy Ventures
Venture Partner

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Pathfinder in Europe, the US and Canada, Eric is supporting as Venture Partner Breakthrough Energy Ventures. In his previous entrepreneur roles, Eric was CEO of a Canadian medical device company, quoted in the US & producing robotic devices with AI solution and, beforehand, Eric was President Europe of a startup company, translating pioneering 3D bioprinting technology for innovative treatments for children patients with rare disorders. Former senior executive in the pharmaceutical industry, Principal with the Boston Consulting Group, Eric is a Medical Doctor -specialized in public health & epidemiology-, a Physical Chemist -specialized in air pollution & physics of the environment-, and a MBA.

Pierre-Philippe Mathieu

ESA
Head of Phi Lab

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Pierre-Philippe Mathieu is heading the Φ-lab Explore Office at the European Space Agency in ESRIN (Frascati, Italy), aiming to connect people, ideas and digital technologies to help shape the future of Earth Observation. He spent 20+ years working in the field of environmental and ocean modelling, weather risk management and remote sensing. He has a degree in mechanical engineering and M.Sc from University of Liege (Belgium), a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Louvain (Belgium), and a Management degree from the University of Reading Business School (Uk).

Alice Driscoll

Alice Driscoll Coaching
Founder and Leadership Coach

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Alice Driscoll is a leadership team and conflict coach supporting the leaders of rapid-growth tech businesses to build high-performance teams. Based in London, Alice is accredited in a wide range of psychological, coaching and communication models. A qualified mediator, Alice also specialises in workplace conflict resolution.

Esther Peeks

HighTechXL
Team Dynamic Expert

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Esther Peeks is a team dynamics expert at the Netherlands’ only deep-tech venture builder, HighTechXL in Eindhoven. She supports startups from team recruitment and formation to high performance level. Esther and her team bring together entrepreneurial, innovation-minded individuals and groundbreaking technologies to solve grand societal challenges the world faces today. Special interests include diversity in teams, female leadership and objectifying the gut feeling we have about team performance of the teams we work with in the program

Lise Rechsteiner

Vsquared Ventures
Partner

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Lise has been working in venture capital for the last six years. Most recently, she was Founding Partner of Propagator Ventures, an early-stage deep tech VC with investments in North America and Europe. Before that, she was Investment Director at Nordic Impact and Investment Manager at the German Corporate VC Bauer Venture Partners. She also worked operationally at the company-builder Rocket Internet, being MP in several Nordic markets. She has a Ph.D. in Management, Technology & Economics (MTEC) from ETH Zurich and is half-Norwegian, half-Swiss, however against all odds, terrible at skiing.

Pippa Gawley

Zero Carbon Capital
Founding Partner

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Zero Carbon Capital is an early-stage venture fund backing European companies building innovative, scientific solutions to the biggest, hardest challenges of decarbonisation. We’re making pre-seed and seed investments across all emissions sectors; from agriculture to industrial processes, and energy to transportation.

Stefano Bernardi

Unruly Capital
Founder and GP

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Stefano is the founder and sole GP of Unruly Capital, a pre-seed investment firm investing in what’s crazy today and normal tomorrow. He has invested now in more than 100 companies, and previously was a YC-backed founder, spending 5 years in the valley.